Strategy Response, Week 11

One technique that Jillian Wiese uses throughout her collection is the act of naming and what is also implicit with naming—which is claiming. In “Below Water” the speaker notices “you staring at the railroad tracks / along my spine, and I thought / Mine, mine.” In “Notes on the Body (2)” the speaker states that “they call me patient”—in “Body as Harbor” the speaker points out “here is a painting of a harbor, / I will call you Captain, there is / your ship”—in “The Body in Pain” we see “This is the spine )” and then this is not only a declaration of naming—this is the spine—but there is an object given to become a embodiment of the spine in text form. The whole collection, of course, acts as an embodiment to fill the physical lack the speaker possesses as an amputee. And it is not a revelation to claim that a poet’s job to name, yet, this collection seems to want to be reclaiming or claiming more than words. What I am still trying to connect in my own mind as reader and as practicing poet is how the collection goes beyond the sheer act of naming and what is being created out of absence and how that is being done textually. What complicates this discovery for me seems to be the element of gender and the powers of gender that are also at play. In particular, “Abscission” bestows upon the male “you” in the poem the act of naming: “Your favorite post-coital pastime / is nicknaming my scars.” Here, the speaker seems to give back to the male the historical and/or Biblical role of namer and relinquishes her authoritative position. What I think enables the speaker to regain power, however, is then the males throughout throughout the collection fall into the feminine position of questioning and generating cyclical states of being: Do you sleep with it on? Do you bathe with it on? Will you take it off in front of me? Is it all right if I touch it? (“The Old Questions”) Just like our previous discussions on the rejection of the traditional, patriarchal linear-ness of poetry by Estes and Fagan, we engage here with another role reversal and possible rejection with Weise being the namer. Even after several reads of this collection I am still trying to parse my way through what is going on. I feel that is maybe because it is not textual apparent as say Fagan or Estes—but none the less still as equally demanding of our attention.